


Nightmares Always End

by astarsdarkheart



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Memories, Prophetic Dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 17:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9082309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astarsdarkheart/pseuds/astarsdarkheart
Summary: Leia doesn't usually remember her dreams. They don't matter much, fading from her mind as soon as the day begins and there's wars to be won. There are five exceptions.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote all this in the space of about two hours. Today has not been a good day. Woke up with a migraine headache, and then Carrie Fisher. So I'm tired and sad and don't want to think any longer. So I wrote a thing, because obviously that takes no thinking whatsoever. Jama is sometimes inconsistent. But I needed to remind myself of the whole 'nightmares always end' thing. Life of late has done its damned best to disabuse me of that notion.  
> All of the dreams are altered versions of dreams I remember having. Dreams are a peculiar type of weird that are surprisingly hard to make up, so I didn't bother. (These are pretty much the only dreams I remember even fragments of, though the extent to which the fic versions resemble the actual dreams I had varies.)

In the first dream Leia remembered, her mother was torn away from her by a shadow that could have been Vader as she reached for Breha's hand, calling out for this to stop. The mob at the door had come to take her father, they said, but they still took Breha. Did they mean the head of the household? In many languages and cultures, that meant the father. But not here. Here it meant Breha who braided her hair and answered petitions from politicians and stood on a podium to announce the start of a new year. Her parents sat either side of her when she woke up crying.

“We aren't part of a dream. We'll always be here when you wake up,” Bail told her as he patted her hair. She nodded, giggled as she wriggled in his lap.

Breha nodded, running fingers through her daughter's hair as she braided the dark brown strands. Bail smiled and held her close. “Nightmares run away as soon as they see light. Remember that. They'll always end.”

 

Years later, she stared out of a battle station window at the blue world she called home. She'd resisted the droid that had tortured her with needles and pain, she'd resisted Darth Vader reaching into her mind trying to find the name he wanted. But Tarkin would kill so many if she held strong now.

Alderaan only had a moon for that dreadful half hour. Her heart pounded in her chest as she looked down at the world where she knew Bail and Breha waited for her, and let her heart leap into her mouth.

She lied, of course. But as long as it kept the Death Star away from the glow of her home...

Tarkin fired anyway. And she almost collapsed back into Darth Vader's metal chest. His cold, dead presence made her lungs tighten, strangling the words out of her throat as she watched her home blown apart.

Her parents would not be there when she woke up.

 

 

The second dream was not a nightmare. But it was strange. She'd watched Alderaan fade before falling asleep, and yet there she was running through the corridors of her old home, dress curling and flapping behind her.

“Hush!” someone said in front of her.

“But why -”

She didn't know his face, but he appeared in front of her, not even approaching from behind. “We have be careful. Your father can't know.”

“But why would Bail -”

“Never mind. Come on.” He tugged at her hand. She hesitated for a moment, but for some reason, she trusted him. So when he started running, she followed.

She woke up and frowned as she bent her legs and folded her arms over her knees, the black wall of the cell pressing cold against her back through her dress. She had to forget about Alderaan. Maybe it wouldn't matter. Perhaps Tarkin would just have her terminated. But if they did things right, she'd have to go on trial, and then she'd have to defend herself. She couldn't think about Alderaan while she was in front of the Inquisitors explaining how she could be innocent despite her ship departing from Scarif before the battle had been declared over, before Rogue One had been confirmed ended.

 

The youth who'd burst into her cell in stolen stormtrooper's uniform had the hair of the stranger she'd seen in her dream, but not his face. That face belonged to the scoundrel that the youth had dragged with him, the arrogant and selfish smuggler. And what would a laser brain rascal like him be doing in Leia's dreams?

Watching Alliance fighters die one by one in the skies of Yavin 4, her heart twisted and turned as if it wanted to be inside out, to turn itself away from the fate that she was almost certain faced Luke. Luke had lost his old life because Leia's mission had forced its way into it by way of an escape pod containing two droids. Now he was out there risking his life. Any moment now he'd be forced to give it up.

Then another ship appeared on the scope, firing off a couple of blasts that shook one of the TIE fighters off Luke's tail. He made the shot.

In the stillness of glowing relief, as Commander Willard stepped back with a sigh that sounded like the beginnings of a laugh, she murmured, “May the Force be with you, you scoundrel.”

And Han Solo appeared in the hangar when the few survivors made it back. In an ecstatic dance of exaltation, Leia looked from one to the other and decided she could trust them both. Would her father have trusted them? She had no way of knowing. But that had been a dream. Dreams always ended. They had to, otherwise nightmares would go on for all of time.

 

 

The third dream started out less odd, but when she woke up and found the pieces of it slipping out of mind like a childhood memory, it made less sense. Why had she been caught in a grey maze that sometimes opened to the sky and sometimes didn't? Why had the people who'd guided her through it been so chalky-pale in the face? Why had voices cracked as blasters fired somewhere in the distance?

She couldn't remember anything that she'd said, or that they'd said. The maze had just been grey wall after grey wall. Only one way to go, but it had twisted and turned back on itself several times. The place had drowned in moonlight – what sort of place was she remembering?

The dream seemed to have nothing to offer her. Still, fragments of it stuck to the walls of her memory like a bitter aftertaste of poisoned food.

 

“You need to take a vacation, you know,” Han told her one evening as they lay sprawled on a hillside watching a meteor shower light up the atmosphere.

She scoffed. “My entire life has been the rebellion. It's hard to take vacations from life. You either retire or you keep going.”

“That's the problem, your ladyship.” He turned his head. Did the grin get less wide for a moment? “What are you going to do with yourself? The Emperor's dead, Vader's dead -”

“But the Imps aren't done fighting yet.” She folded her hands together over her heart and sighed. Her pulse thudded along at a temperate pace – no firefights today, nothing exciting. This planet was safe enough that she and Han could lie here with their blasters at arm's length and fear nothing. “There are officers who can keep parts of the Empire's machine running for a while longer. We can't afford to be complacent.”

Han sighed and let his head roll back. A shooting star streaked past, its tail turning an unusual green as it cut its trail across the light-speckled sky. “And I'll keep fighting as long as you do. But once it's over, promise me you'll take a few months and come play around in the Outer Rim some. Learn Dejarik, fool around, forget about the politics for a while.”

“Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Han.”

He chuckled.

“And I already know how to play Dejarik.”

His head turned as his eyebrows moved up towards his hairline. She let herself smile and lifted a hand to point at the cluster of small yellowish stars. Pinpricks of light were moving past the stars and the dim haze of their parent nebula. “There's a big group coming at us.”

 

 

The fourth dream's icy fingers released their grip on her only to let her heart attempt to run from her ribcage. She sat shocked and still in her bed for several minutes. As bird-like trills from outside began to mark the passing moments, her hand rose to still her shuddering heart.

She'd been safe at first. She hadn't recognised the palace – she hadn't dreamt of her old home on Alderaan for a while now. She couldn't forget. But that palace was not Alderaanian. Full of faces she knew. Luke and Han had kept her company as they wandered the gleeful streets around the palace. It must have been market day. No city would keep moving for long if the streets were that crowded every day.

Then her commlink had buzzed, and kept buzzing though she turned it off. The sky turned a deep sea blue, then violent purple as Ben failed to appear. Without company, unable to remember where she lost them, she ran through the streets. A landspeeder lay abandoned in the mouth of a dark alleyway. Her commlink buzzed again, and then a rumbling voice started playing though she hadn't picked it up.

_“_ _I have him now.”_

The crowds had cleared. Now it was just the dark streets and her.

Thank the Force she'd woken up. That dream could not have ended well. Han moved his arm, catching the edge of her hand. She sighed and settled back down. Just a dream. Just as Bail had told her, nightmares run away as soon as they see light. Ben was safe with Luke. And she was safe from that nightmare.

 

Luke didn't look her in the eye when he stopped for two days at their home.

“It's not your fault, Luke. You couldn't have done anything more.” She had to tell him that. His shoulders had fallen forward to round his back like a turtle's shell. He shook his head.

“The whole academy is gone. I tried to build something new. Something that would last.”

Han hung his head. Leia could see the words forming in his mind. _Too much Vader in him._ All the worst parts of Leia's biological father, the man who'd let the galaxy burn. But Luke still spoke of his father with such devoted love that Han didn't dare voice the idea for fear of angering Luke. And now was not the time.

“I have to go.” Luke shook his head again and rose to his feet. His right hand clicked against the hilt of his lightsaber as he adjusted the Jedi weapon on his belt.

Before she knew it she'd taken a step forward. “Luke, wait...”

“The old Jedi forgot their roots, so they failed.” He was muttering to himself now, but Leia's tongue wouldn't move to let her interrupt him. “I have to go back to the start. I need to see what they were trying to build.”

“You can try again, Luke.” Han's boots clopped against the floor as he strode away from the doorway to stand in front of Luke. But Luke only shook his head.

“There's nothing left. There's no foundation to build from.”

He turned left towards the door as Han turned to watch him, mouth open, though he seemed as lost as Leia found herself.

Even as Luke's footsteps faded, they could only look at each other with heavy hearts and darkened eyes. Leia let her eyes fall first, to the holo on the wall of Ben holding a training lightsaber for the first time. He watched the blade move with loyal intensity as Luke smiled in the background.

 

 

The fifth dream should have been a nightmare. Caught in the back room of yet another palace – the architects of her dreams were committed to their craft – as smoke wafted through the vents and worried arguments rose to dismayed shouts in the corridor. Arson. The place was on fire, and the halls were long, twisting and narrow.

She found herself outside before long, though the details of how she got there blurred together behind her eyelids. Someone found her, called her General, and started reeling off the names of the dead. Whoever they were, they started with the crew of Rogue One, the call sign that the Rogue Squadron would never use. And the names of dead fighters just kept on going. Biggs Darklighter – just a face in a crowd of pilots while he'd been alive. He'd only become a fully fleshed figure in her mind after she heard Luke's stories of their time on Tatooine. And so many more, so many more dead in a fire that had flared up in a palace of stone...

But nothing shivered when she woke up. Her heart didn't race, her hands didn't shake. The morning fog had yet to clear from her mind, with no mortal though ephemeral terror to pierce through it.

When had she grown numb to tragedy?

 

“Do you think she'll make it?”

She started. Poe stood just inside the broad entrance to the Resistance headquarters. He bit his lip as she watched.

She managed to smile. “I do. What impression did the natives of Jakku give you of their capabilities? Desert planets breed a hardy sort.” Like her brother. If anyone would be able to convince Luke to come home, it'd be a plucky young girl who'd come from a world so similar to his own. How much like Rey had Leia looked when she'd been that age? That had been the age at which she and Luke had first met in a Death Star cell.

Poe nodded. “They don't give in easily.”

Poe had watched Lor San Tekka refuse to give up his secrets to Ben. He knew what Jakku's people were like. Though she couldn't fault him for having doubts. Luke had been gone for so long that it was easy to consider him a lost cause. “I only hope Finn will be back on his feet before she returns.”

“I think he'll be fine.” A faint smile crept onto Poe's face before he stiffened up in an attempt to retain decorum. “The squadron has reported back on as many details from Starkiller Base as they can remember. You should hear the report, but if you'd rather...”

“No, I'll hear it.” She patted her hair just to make sure the bun was still in place, then brushed the dust off her dress. Lieutenant Connix had been very taken with the blue fabric. Maybe if there was more of the fabric to be found, Leia could arrange for some garments made out of it for the Lieutenant. Force knew the poor dear deserved it after all the bad news that her family had received in the aftermath of the destruction of Starkiller Base.

“Are you sure, General?” Poe's brows tightened together. “After everything you've lost...”

She sighed through a forced smile, though it turned into a chuckle halfway through as she gestured for Poe to accompany her into the headquarters. Losing Han still ached in her chest, but sorrows couldn't be allowed to stop her dead. “Loss is a fact of war, and I've been fighting in one for most of my life.”

“But to lose your husband after not seeing him for so long...” Poe seemed to be struggling to line the words up, and they stumbled loose and lilting off his tongue.

“It's a peculiar type of nightmare.” She took a deep breath. She could smile. He was earnest in his attempts to be respectful of her grief, after all. She could show him more kindness than her title demanded, after sending him on a mission that would have been the end of his career had it not been for a righteous stormtrooper who dared to say no. He waited for her to go on, alert and patient. “My father once told me, when I woke up from a nightmare as a child, that nightmares run away as soon as they see the light. They hurt, but it's temporary. Nightmares always end.”

**Author's Note:**

> Må Kraften vara med dig, Carrie Fisher.


End file.
